Sex variant women in literature : A historical and quantitative survey

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Jeannette H. Foster's *Sex Variant Women in Literature: A Historical and Quantitative Survey* is a pioneering bibliographic and critical study of female same-sex desire in world literature. Combining historical overview, cataloguing, and evaluative commentary, Foster traces representations of "sex variant" women across periods and languages, assembling an unprecedented archive of novels, poems, memoirs, and dramatic works. Its method is both documentary and interpretive: scholarly in scope, empirical in ambition, and deeply engaged with the problem of how lesbian experience has been obscured, coded, or distorted within literary tradition. Foster was an American librarian, scholar, and one of the earliest serious historians of lesbian literature. Writing in the mid-twentieth century, when open discussion of homosexuality remained heavily stigmatized, she brought bibliographic rigor and personal commitment to a field largely neglected by academia. Her training in research and classification clearly shaped the book's systematic character, while her historical moment gave urgency to the recovery of texts and authors otherwise consigned to silence. This book is indispensable for readers interested in lesbian literary history, queer studies, bibliography, and the politics of canon formation. Though shaped by the terminology of its era, it remains a landmark work: courageous, foundational, and remarkably rich in literary discovery.